Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley by Peter Kreeft

Book Two of 2014: Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous HuxleyBetween Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley by Peter Kreeft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What do C.S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley have in common? They all died on the same day in 1963. As the title says, Peter Kreeft imagines a conversation between the three of them in some kind of in-between place after death.

I liked this fictional dialogue well enough. I'll probably even peruse it again at some point. (It was a very quick read for me.) However, I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I thought there would be more of a conversation between all three men, but really it was more like two separate conversations. The first one was between Lewis and Kennedy (Christian Theism vs. Modern Humanism), the second between Lewis and Huxley (Christian Theism vs. Eastern pantheism).

I did enjoy the Socratic dialog, as well as the arguments Lewis made from a literary point of view when talking about the Gospels as truth or made up stories. I also enjoyed recognizing so much of what Lewis said as he would reference things he wrote or even just allude to them. I would consider assigning this book to students in an Introduction to Philosophy class or even Apologetics.

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